FolkEast is well known for its record of ‘firsts’, and this year will be no exception. Saturday will see an exclusive festival performance of a new, all-star show, Saltlines, in which FolkEast has been a collaborator. It follows a tour of Saltlines in South West venues this July andsees Peter Knight’s ever-inventive Gigspanner Big Band– a firm favourite at FolkEast over the years – joining forces with best-selling author Raynor Winn in a show which mines traditional songs and tunes from the West Country and new words from Winn, inspired by the region .

SE “It was apparent that if the band was to move forward we had to write a new body of songs based on our skills as lyricist and composers embracing contemporary issues as well as reflecting an English musical identity that isn’t specifically rooted in the folk tradition.” He was still receiving a student grant when he co-founded the jazz-influenced Weekend, so decided to change his professional name. As Simon Booth he played guitar on Weekend’s La Varieté (1982), on which Alison Statton’s bossa-influenced vocals were matched against jazz players including Annie Whitehead on trombone and Larry Stabbins on saxophone. Live at Ronnie Scott’s (1983) featured the jazz pianist Keith Tippett.

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Featuring musicians in the Imagined Village, Walking With Ghosts, The Nightjar Orchestra, The Petrels and the Sound Approach – They have all been busy with other projects, of course – though Simon says that Eliza has constantly been pestering him to organise a re-union. The most ambitious folk fusion band of the 21st century, The Imagined Village set out to match English traditional songs against the sounds of contemporary multi-cultural England, with influences from Asia, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Members of the Saltlines collective will also be involved elsewhere at the festival – John Spiers will take up his regular seat on FolkEast’s Gardeners’ Cornered panel (FolkEast’s answer to Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time), where audience members can discuss their plant issues (!) while BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Best Duo winners Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin (Edgelarks) will be performing their own set.

But what is Englishness? That question has already provoked a swathe of books, mostly by Tory diehards – Roger Scruton’s England, An Elegy and Peter Hitchens’ The Abolition of Britain for example – though Billy Bragg’s The Progressive Patriot has recently joined the fray, arguing, like Orwell before him, that patriotism is not necessarily the refuge of rascals. Bragg’s point is that there is a distinctly English tradition that belongs not to royalists and imperialists, but to the people, a tradition that runs from The Diggers to The Clash. Tom Moore and Archie Moss, widely regarded as two of the best players and innovators in traditional folk, will be heading to Suffolk as well as Solana, a five-piece from Bristol, Whitby’s Richard Grainger and Bristol-based singer–songwriter Reema. In part, the album reflects Simon’s extraordinary journey as a musician. With his roots in the political, post-punk era, Simon first created the acoustic trio Weekend, with singer Alison Stratton, and then Working Week, whose blend of jazz, soul and Latin helped define an Eighties whose intelligence was at odds with the decade’s Duran-style pop. As a mover and shaker in London’s clubland he co-produced two albums of ‘Acid Jazz’ alongside Gilles Peterson before producing world musicians like Baaba Maal and Manu Dibango. After this he founded the Afro Celt Sound System, a daring fusion of musical cultures and an ensemble that remains a festival favourite to this day. Simon has three Grammy nominations to his credit. Also previously announced for England’s most easterly festival are fast-rising singer songwriter Katherine Priddy, Spiers and Boden, the effervescent Sam Kelly & The Lost Boysand Anglo-French five-piece Topette!! whose latest album we reviewed here.SE ‘As a band we feel we’ve come through tough times but just through dogged perseverance and the simple joy of playing together we’ve achieved what we set out to do when we came off the Empire and Love Tour January 2010: make a recording that reflects both the fun and energy we generate as a live unit, plus our respective skills, eccentricities and unique identities as song writers, arrangers and musicians. We’ve never felt more united as a band and we hope this comes across on the album’ It is in this context that Simon Emmerson’s The Imagined Village arrives, its name borrowed from Georgina Boyes’ book about the Edwardian folk boom. The project – for once that over-worked term is appropriate – reflects Simon’s passions as both musician and cultural activist. Gathering together an array of brilliant and challenging voices, and setting them in a musical framework that honours the past while updating it with breathtaking confidence, The Imagined Village is arguably the most ambitious re-invention of the English folk tradition since Fairport Convention’ Liege and Lief. Charlie Moores and Magnus Robb – Red Deer Rutting (podcast extract – music Polar Drift, Simon Emmerson and Simon ‘Palmskin Richmond) Englishness is the final frontier of world music.’– Simon Emmerson, head man of The Imagined Village